BMW - Formula For Success

It’s taken three (long) model generations, but BMW has finally gotten the formula right with the latest Z4.

- Daryl Lee

You know what they say about being third time lucky? Well, it seems BMW knows about it too.

Except perhaps in the case of the Z4, it’s not so much luck as the blood, sweat, and tears of the people who worked on the third car to wear the Z4 badge. The first car, designed under the stewardship of Chris Bangle, was, like many of his cars, somewhat… challenging. If you wanted to be rude, you might even call it ugly. A (most probably apocryphal) quote attributed to industrial designer Marc Newson went something along the lines of the first Z4 looking as if it had been styled with a machete.

Clearly, this is something BMW took to heart because it corrected those styling ills with the second Z4. Taking inspiration from the GINA concept car, the Z4 had a long bonnet, rearset cab and my favourite design feature of all, the very-Bangle pair of opposing ‘lines to nowhere’ character lines on its flanks.

It was a pretty thing, then. And with its folding hardtop, a feature all the rage in its day, drivers could experience the joys of owning a coupe and an open-top roadster all in one car.

Except that BMW forgot about the handling. The second Z4 felt fat, wasn’t particularly confidence-inspiring and left me wondering where the BMW handling magic had gone to.

And so, we come to the third-generation Z4. One wonders why BMW didn’t call it the Z6 instead, but anyway.